Zusammenfassung
Der Velika Gorica-Friedhof und vergleichbare Fundorte im binnenländischen Kroatien. Der vorlie-gende Artikel behandelt Grabkontexte aus Verlika Gorica (Zagreb). Der Fundort wurde durch Zufall beim Kiesabbau auf dem Grundstück (Kataster-Nr. 380/2) des Geschäfts-manns Nikola Hribar in der Nähe des örtlichen Spitals ent-deckt. Es wurden Brandbestattungen sowie mittelalterliche Körpergräber gefunden. Der erste Befund wurde von V.
Hoffiller 1909 publiziert. Derselbe Autor analysierte 1924 die Keramikfunde. Die Funde von Velika Gorica lieferten die Definitionsbasis für die jüngere Phase der Urnenfel-derkultur in Nordkroatien. Später wurde die Bezeichnung Velika Gorica-Gruppe von Ksenija Vinski-Gasparini ein-geführt. Alle erhaltenen Gräber wurden 2009 von Snježana Karavanić publiziert.
Abstract
The article deals with the grave assemblages from the Velika Gorica (Zagreb) site. The site was discovered by chance during pebble quarrying on the cadastral plot no.
380/2, owned by a businessman named Nikola Hribar, and is located near the local hospital. On that occasion, finds from cremation burials, as well as from later, medieval inhu-mations, were found. The first report was published by V.
Hoffiller in 1909. The same author analysed ceramic finds in 1924. The finds from Velika Gorica provided the basis for the definition of the younger phase of the Urnfield cul-ture in North Croatia. Later the term Velika Gorica group was introduced by KsenijaVinski-Gasparini. All preserved graves were published by Snježana Karavanić in 2009.
1. Introduction
The Urnfield culture in Croatia is represented by grave finds from the entire time span of this culture (fig. 1). Un-fortunately, most of the cemeteries were not systematically excavated and they lack closed grave finds and find circum-stances. From the early Urnfield culture we have cemeter-ies at Virovitica and Sirova Katalena, which were excavated in the 60ies by Ksenija Vinski-Gasparini.1 They formed a basis for the definition of the so-called 1st phase of the Urn-field culture in Croatia and later the Virovitica group. We can also attribute the cemeteries of Moravče2, Drljanovac3 and Voćin4 to this group. Furthermore, we can mention cemeteries of the Gređani group, excavated by K. Minich-reiter in the 80ies,5 in a separate group. Some new sites at Mačkovac-Crišnjevi6 and Popernjak7 can also be attributed to this group, locally called the Barice-Gređani group. The Zagreb-Vrapče8 cemetery also belongs to the early Urnfield culture and its phase II.
We attributed cemeteries from Zagreb-Horvati, Velika Gorica, Krupače, Trešćerovac9 and Ozalj10 to the late phase of the Urnfield culture. The cemeteries of the Dalj group11 form a separate group.
1. Vinski-Gasparini 1973.
2. Sokol 1990. – Sokol 1996.
3. Majnarić Pandžić 1988. – Majnarić Pandžić 1994.
4. Ložnjak 2003.
5. Minichreiter 1983.
6. Mihaljević, Kalafatić 2004.
7. Marijan 2005.
8. Vinski-Gasparini 1973.
9. Vinski-Gasparini 1973.
10. Balen-Letunić 1981.
11. Metzner-Nebelsick 2002.
2. Location of the site
The area investigated covers today’s administrative units of Zagreb and Karlovac county. The site (fig. 2) is located right in the middle of the present day town of Velika Gorica, which was formerly a suburb of Zagreb. It is 10 km away from Zagreb and lies on the territory south of the river Sava.
In prehistory it was exposed to different cultural influences, both from the Balkans as well as Pannonia and the Eastern Alpine region. Velika Gorica and Dobova lie on the natural pass from the lower to the upper Sava valley. Dobova is only 37 km linear distance from Velika Gorica. This territory is located between the mountains Medvednica, Žumberak and Samoborsko gorje and we have evidendce for several hill-fort sites from the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age on their slopes like Susedgrad, Sv. Križ Brdovečki and Bregana-Kosovac.12
3. History of the research on the Velika Gorica cemetery The first report was written by V. Hoffiller,13 who de-scribed and analysed the finds of 20 graves (15 cremation graves in urns and 5 inhumations) that were discovered in 1908.
The site was discovered during the pebble quarrying on the cadastral plot no. 380/2, owned by a businessman named
12. Vrdoljak 1996.
13. Hoffiller 1909.
Nikola Hribar, and located near the local hospital.14 On that occasion, finds from cremation burials, as well as from later, medieval inhumations, were found. It is mentioned that urn graves were also found on the cadastral plot no. 543.15
The information from the museum’s archives16 informs us that during 1909, and under the direction of the Archaeo-logical Museum in Zagreb, 16 graves were found, and a fur-ther 14 were discovered the following year. In 1910 T. Kalčić found 7 graves, and in 1916 an additional 6. During 1910, 1911, 1914, and 1924 the Museum received additional finds from the Velika Gorica cemetery as a gift from the owner of the land. A total of 67 graves, most of them cremation buri-als of prehistoric age, were excavated. However, there were some from the Roman period, as well as 6 inhumations from the medieval period.
In 1924 V. Hoffiler published a paper on the prehis-toric urns from the site in the Frane Bulić Festschrift (Serta Buliciana).17
The finds from Velika Gorica were also published by him in the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum series.18
14. Hoffiller 1909, 120.
15. Hoffiller 1909, fig. 17.
16. V. Vejvoda, Prethistorijsko nalazište Velika Gorica (archives of the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb).
17. Hoffiller 1924.
18. Hoffiller 1938.
Fig. 1. Map of the Urnfield culture cemetery sites in continental Croatia. 1. Virovitica – 2. Sirova Katalena – 3. Moravče – 4. Drljanovac – 5. Mala Pupelica – 6. Voćin – 7. Popernjak – 8. Mačkovac-Crišnjevi – 9. Gređani – 10. Perkovci-Dobrevo – 11. Slavonska Požega-Bajer – 12. Grabarje (Slavonska Požega) – 13. Vranovci (Slavonski Brod) – 14. Oriovac (Slavonski Brod) – 15. Nova Bukovica (Podravska Slatina) – 16. Ludbreg – 17. Zagreb-Vrapče – 18. Zagreb-Horvati – 19. Velika Gorica – 20. Krupače – 21. Trešćerovac – 22. Ozalj – 23. Batina – 24. Dalj – 25. Vukovar-Lijeva Bara – 26. Šarengrad.
They also appear in the list of the Archaeological map of Yugoslavia under the name of Velika Gorica, Blatt Zagreb.19 The first catalogue of chosen grave assemblages from the Velika Gorica cemetery was published by F. Staré20 and was analysed by him the same year in his paper on semilunar razors from Yugoslavia.21
K. Vinski-Gasparini22 included the finds in her synthe-sis, but chose not to do a detailed analysis of the finds from the late period of the Urnfield culture, as they had already been previously published. K. Vinski-Gasparini23 published 5 graves: 7/1908, 1/1910, 2/1910, 1/1911 and 3/1916.
In our work, we have chosen to do a detailed analysis of the complete inventory from the site that is housed in the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb. Graves were analysed according to their description in the inventory books, and an attempt was made to reconstruct the previously unre-constructed grave associations. Our analysis also added new items to the grave contents published by V. Hoffiller24 and
19. Klemenc 1938.
20. Staré 1957a.
21. Staré 1957b.
22. Vinski-Gasparini 1973.
23. Vinski-Gasparini 1973.
24. Hoffiller 1909.
K. Vinski-Gasparini25 (1973). All of the preserved graves at Velika Gorica were published by the author of this article in 2009.26
4. The reconstructed number of the graves
We divided the graves into those known only from de-scriptions in the literature (fig. 3), those with the known material that is housed in the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb, and those graves that we assume might have also been excavated (blue colour). From our work on the mate-rial from Velika Gorica it is assumed that a total of 53 urn graves from the prehistoric age could be registered, but only 22 could be reconstructed as closed grave finds, 19 are known from the literature and the remaining 12 graves are only assumed to have been excavated.
5. Burial rites
The only data about the type of cremation burials at Velika Gorica come from V. Hoffiller’s report27 about the excavation of 9 urn graves at the aforementioned cadastral plot 380/2 owned by Nikola Hribar. All of these graves were found at a depth of 40–50 cm, except grave 1 which
25. Vinski-Gasparini 1973.
26. Karavanić 2009.
27. Hoffiller 1909.
Fig. 2. Map with the location of the Velika Gorica and Dobova sites.
was found at a depth of 80 cm. They were all buried in the pebble soil. V. Hoffiller mentions that all the 9 graves were at the same place, at a distance of 3 m from each other. The soil around each grave, about 1 m2, was very dark and black and mixed with charcoal. I assume that this was probably the traces of burial pits. The statement that the urns were very small vessels, rarely covered with another small vessel, is very important information from this report. The burnt bones were mostly found around the vessels, but it is pos-sible that there were examples with bones inside the urns.
Items made of metal were also located near the urn.28 As in the case of the finds from Krupače and Trešćerovac, it was not possible to preserve all the urns, due to the poor quality of the pottery, as well as the humidity of the soil. It is also worth mentioning that the vessels that we called urns did not always serve as a container for cremated bones. They actually have very small dimensions and have usually a hole on the vessel walls.
We can take the results of the excavation of the Dobova cemetery, just across the border in Slovenia, as a parallel to the Velika Gorica cremation burials. The graves are dug into the same alluvial Sava pebble soil. F. Staré29 distinguished three groups of graves there:
1. The first group are the graves with the bones inside
28. Hoffiller 1909, 122.
29. Staré 1952. – Staré 1975.
the urn, which was placed into the grave pit. Grave goods are very rare in this group and are mostly placed in the urn.
2. The second group are the graves with a vessel-urn. But the bones are placed on the bottom of the pit together with charcoal. Grave goods are most frequent in this group and were placed in the urn as well as beneath it on the bottom of the grave pit.
3. The third group are the graves without urns and only with bones inside the grave pit with charcoal. The grave goods were mostly some pieces of pottery.
We have evidence of the existence of large vessels or urns inside which small vessels were placed together with cremat-ed bones and grave goods from the cemetery of Krupače.30 The urns were found at a depth of 40 cm beneath the sur-face. Some were covered with a small bowl, and inside the urns, on the layer of ashes, a small pot also covered with a bowl was found. Inside this small pot there were cremated bones and a rare piece of metal. J. Brunšmid also mentions an example of a small urn, with cremated bones inside it and metal grave goods beside it, beneath the layer of burnt soil.
For the Trešćerovac31 cemetery we also have some data from the Šime Ljubić report from 1885, where it is stated that 46 urns were found in an area with a length of 21 m and a width of 11.5 m. Some urns were placed 50 cm beneath the surface, some 1 m and some right beneath the surface. Four
30. Brunšmid 1898.
31. Ljubić 1885.
Fig. 3. Table with the preserved and non-preserved grave finds at Velika Gorica.
urns had a stone slab cover, one had a double stone slab and the others had a bowl as a lid. The same applied at Krupače, a small urn and cup could be found inside the big vessel.
Only in one case was this small urn outside but near the big vessel. Š. Ljubić assumed that a total of 130 vessels were found. Š. Ljubić also stated that it is possible that these urn graves were used for burying two or three persons because cremated bones fill half of one big urn and were also found in some small vessels. Unfortunately we do not have any anthropological data from these graves. It is also interesting that Š. Ljubić reports about the existence of places where the cremation might have taken place. These places were near the urns, about 50 cm away from them and that was the evidence for a cremation ceremony performed on the same cemetery.
At Ozalj Balen-Letunić32 distinguished several types of graves:
1. A grave pit with the urn covered with a bowl or other ves-sel. The ashes and cremated bones are placed into the urn.
2. A grave pit dug into the bedrock with stone covering and with the same type of urn. The cremated bones are inside or outside of the urn.
3. A grave pit with traces of cremated bones and ashes and a ceramic bowl as a grave good.
6. The number and structure of grave goods from Velika Gorica
6.1 The number of grave goods per grave
The richest of the Velika Gorica graves is grave E/1910 (fig. 4) containing over 30 finds. However, we include
vari-32. Balen-Letunić 1981.
Fig. 4. The number of finds in the Velika Gorica graves.
ous fragments that could not be reconstructed accurately (except in rare cases) in this number, making it larger than it actually is.
A similar situation is seen in the case of grave F/1910 with over 20 finds. A somewhat more realistic situation is observed in graves 7/1908, 1/1911, and 3/1916 as those con-tain a smaller number of fragments. Therefore, these three latter graves should be considered the richest of the Velika Gorica graves. In them, the grave goods are mostly bronze tools and weapons, and some decorative items. With fewer goods, but still quite rich in goods (between 5 and 10) are graves 3/1914, 1/1910, A/1910, 5/1908, and 2/1910, while in other graves fewer than 5 objects were found.
6.2 The number of grave goods at Velika Gorica
A total of 296 items or grave goods is present in the Veli-ka Gorica assemblage. It can be compared with the Dobova cemetery where we counted a number of 732 grave goods (fig. 5). It has to be noted that in this analysis all of the items were included, not just the ones for which the grave affilia-tion is known. This can present a methodological problem and further enlarges the item list.
We have defined 20 variables that represent different types of items at the Velika Gorica cemetery. These are:
1 pin 2 necklace 3 bracelet 4 bronze ring 5 hair ring 6 spectacle fibula 7 fibula
8 fibula of passementerie style (Posamentierfibel) 9 bead
The most abundant grave good type in Velika Gorica is bracelets (fig. 6) (a total of 96 bracelets were found in closed grave associations). The second most abundant type is
ce-ramic vessels (type 18), and necklaces (type 2). Both items are represented by 32 finds.
It has to be noted that some graves contained a sin-gle vessel, broken into pieces, and could represent an urn containing the remains of a cremation. The other possibil-ity is that it represents a vessel that was put into the grave as a grave good and not as an urn. Cups and bowls are the most common type of grave goods, while pots, especially those with a hole, were used as urns. After these, the most abundant finds are spectacle fibulae (type 6), of which 20 were found, albeit mostly in fragments. Of other common types 18 spindle whorls (type 17) were found at the cem-etery, 16 hair rings with an interwoven design (type 5), and 14 weights (type 16). 12 bronze rings (type 4) and 10 knives were also found. Other finds vary in their abundance from 1 to 8 pieces.
6.3 Comparison with Dobova
At Dobova,33 the most abundant items are ceramic ves-sels (fig. 7), of which about 500 were found, followed by a hair ring with an interwoven design, pins, and bracelets.
Compared to these, the rest of the item types appear in small quantities, about 10 per item. The two sites are most similar according to the number of bracelets found, while some types that are found at Velika Gorica, such as passe-menterie fibulae and razors, are not found at Dobova at all.34 Comparing the cumulative curves of the items found at Dobova and Velika Gorica, there are clearly differences in the percentages of the various types of items. A significant rise is seen in Velika Gorica in necklaces, while the next rise appears for the bracelets and again for the spectacle fibulae.35
The cumulative curve (fig. 8) for the Dobova material36 is moderately rising to the spindle whorls except for the hair decorations that are somewhat more abundant in compari-son to the other finds.
Ceramic vessels are the most abundant as can be seen in a drastic rise of the values on the curve. This also shows the differences between the sites. At Velika Gorica neck-laces, bracelets and spectacle fibulae are most abundant.
Biba Teržan37 published a graphic comparison of the cem-eteries from Slovenia: Dobova, Ruše and Podbrežje accord-ing to metal objects, graves containaccord-ing ceramic items, and graves without grave goods. It can be seen that at Pobrežje and Ruše a similar number of graves containing metal
ob-33. Karavanić 2000, fig. 4.
34. Karavanić 2000, 42.
35. Karavanić 2000, 43.
36. Karavanić 2000, fig. 6.
37. Teržan 1999, fig. 9 a, b.
jects were discovered, while Dobova has fewer graves with metal objects. Graves with ceramics are most common at Podbrežje, Dobova comes second, while at Ruše these are less frequent. Dobova has the most graves that contain no grave goods, and that makes it different from Velika Gorica, which has lots of grave goods.
7. Pottery types
The most characteristic finds of the Velika Gorica cem-etery are the urns themselves. These appear in several forms.
They mostly have the form of a vessel with a single hole in its middle part. This is, except for the cemetery at Dobova and a few finds from Tolmin, a unique characteristic of this site compared to other sites in the southern Alpine region.
This type of urn is found in graves 2/1910, 3/1910, G/1910, Fig. 5. Comparison of number of finds at Velika Gorica and Dobova.
Fig. 6. The number of different types at Velika Gorica.
4/1911, and 7/1911. K. Vinski-Gasparini38 points to analo-gies with younger forms seen in the Baierdorf-Velatice cul-ture and some of the Dobova urns, and at the same time points to the find of a rounded bowl from Zagreb Vrapče grave 4, in which she sees the origins of the Velika Gorica
38. Vinski-Gasparini 1973, 155.
type of urns.39 She also points to a link with the finds from the Virovitica site.40
These urns with a hole were previously discussed by V. Hoffiller,41 who at first argued that the holes had a practi-cal purpose. This is unlikely as the vessels would fall apart
39. Vinski-Gasparini 1973, t. 25/1.
40. Vinski-Gasparini 1973, t. 9/9; t. 14/5.
41. Hoffiller 1924, 3.
Fig. 8. Curve graph with a comparison between Velika Gorica and Dobova.
Fig. 7. The comparison of number of types between Velika Gorica and Dobova.
if hung. He has published all of the 14 vessels with holes as well as two additional ones that were too damaged to tell whether they had holes or not.42 As V. Hoffiller43 states, the most abundant form of these urns is a rounded or globular vessel with a straight base. This basic form has several varie-ties, some vessels being flatter, others narrower and taller, while those that are widest at the rim are also found. One urn, in particular, is important as far as its dimensions and form44 are concerned, as it has a slightly biconical part in the middle. The form is reminiscent of the younger period of the Velatice culture. One urn has a reconstructed rim. Urns are quite diverse regarding size, ranging from a height of 8.2 cm to 19 cm. The wall thickness varies from 0.5 to 1 cm – which is quite thick. Holes are mostly round, in some cases
if hung. He has published all of the 14 vessels with holes as well as two additional ones that were too damaged to tell whether they had holes or not.42 As V. Hoffiller43 states, the most abundant form of these urns is a rounded or globular vessel with a straight base. This basic form has several varie-ties, some vessels being flatter, others narrower and taller, while those that are widest at the rim are also found. One urn, in particular, is important as far as its dimensions and form44 are concerned, as it has a slightly biconical part in the middle. The form is reminiscent of the younger period of the Velatice culture. One urn has a reconstructed rim. Urns are quite diverse regarding size, ranging from a height of 8.2 cm to 19 cm. The wall thickness varies from 0.5 to 1 cm – which is quite thick. Holes are mostly round, in some cases